Two Weekends, Two Shows, One Special Deal!

Been meaning to put this up for a few days, so sorry for doing this last-minute.  I promise to make it up to you, though!

For you folks who usually see me at Blue Water International Comic-Con, I won't be doing it this year due to low sales the last couple of years (didn't even make table last time).  Instead, I'll be at the NEW Fantasticon show in Waterford, MI -- specifically at the Oakland Expo Center -- September 27-28.  Saturday hours are 11am-6pm, and Sunday is 11am-5pm.  Going by the map I saw when I bought my table, I will be all the way in the back corner of the hall, which means I get to shill books to people as they head to the bathrooms.  Never done anything out in Waterford before, so fingers crossed that sales go up!

Then one week later -- Sunday, October 5th, to be exact -- I'll once again be at Dawn of the Collectors, located at the VFW Bruce Post in Saint Clair Shores, MI.  Show runs 10am-3pm with a 9am early-bird option.  This is the show where I sell not just my book, but all sorts of pop culture goodies that my husband I have acquired...plus we're bringing out the Halloween and Christmas stuff for this one!  If you have kids, let them dress up for trick-or-treating, as some of us (myself included) will be handing out candy.

Speaking of handouts, I said I'd make it up to you, and here it is: if you go to one of these shows and find my table, TELL ME YOU READ THIS POST AND I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING FOR FREE.  It's just a little freebie, so don't think I'm handing you a book gratis, but I want to see how many people actually see this stuff I put up.  For those who can't make it out to the show, put in an order for anything at my online store by October 6 and I'll give you a little something as well.

Okay, that's it for now.  Gotta get some rest 'cause we're heading out tomorrow to set up the table before the Waterford show.  See y'all later!

Self-Pub Progress Report #4

Well, here we are, the last day in October, and we're still prepping Swords & Sixguns for publication. I do apologize for all the delays, and I want to reassure you that we are hard at work getting everything ready, it's just that life gets in the way sometimes (this is why we put "Fall 2016" on the flyers and not "October 2016"). I've been splitting my time between book work, blog work, and paying-job work, while my cover artist Matt Erkhart has been kept away from the drawing board by some personal matters. On the upside, yesterday he sent me the interior art I needed, so now I can finish uploading the manuscript to CreateSpace. With luck, we'll have the cover done soon, and then we can wrap up the whole thing with a pretty little bow and present it to y'all.
Back on the subject of blog work...for those of you who've been enjoying my Jonah Hex history project, I want you to know that it will continue, but it will likely turn into a once-a-year thing. Over the past six months since the last installment, my life became so overwhelmed with Swords & Sixguns-related work that I wasn't able to fit in the interviews I want to do for the Palmiotti & Gray era. There will be an installment this November 1st, same as always, but it'll be an Appendix piece covering a specific facet of Jonah's life, rather like the one I did last year regarding his time in the Confederate Army. As soon as the book is out, I'll get on those interviews, and if I can get the next installment ready by May, it'll go up then, but if not, you'll have it in November for certain.
That's all for now, kids. Remember not to eat all your Halloween candy in one sitting...make it last the whole week.

The next thing you know, the dang things will start sparkling.

For those of you that don't know, the Hillwig household is a zombie household.  My husband Jamin has been a ginormous fan of the original "Night of the Living Dead" ever since he was a kid, and we've met nearly every surviving member of the main cast (we almost met George Romero too, but he had to bow out of a con at the last minute, so he's still on the "wanted" list).  We also tend check out anything and everything zombie-related, usually finding some new treasure along the way (World War Z, The Walking Dead, Shaun of the Dead, etc.).  Heck, as I type this, Jamin's playing "Left 4 Dead" on XBox360 and giggling like crazy as he blows the crap outta corpses.  Suffice it to say, we both know the genre pretty darn good and have a healthy respect for it...which might be why this struck me as so weird.

A few weeks ago, I'm bringing in the mail, and as I pass Jamin on the couch, he points at a flier on the bottom of the pile and says, "What the heck is that?"  I turn it over to see this:

It's a furniture ad.  Featuring a zombie.  In mid-June.  Now, this isn't the first time I've seen a zombie in a non-Halloween ad (there's one for Starburst as well as that new Honda Civic campaign), but in those ads, the companies in question are trying to be hip or edgy so they can appeal to the younger consumers with disposable income, therefore it makes sense for them to use such imagery, while the use of zombies here just comes off as kinda pathetic.  It's freakin' Gardner-White Furniture!  What's hip or edgy about a mattress sale?  Are there scads of males in the 18-34 range out there going, "Hmm, I really need a Serta Perfect Sleeper, but who should I buy it from?  Hey, these guys put zombies in their ad!  They're the store for me!"

Zombies are the "in" thing right now, I get it.  But we're getting so over-saturated that, last month, I watched a National Geographic special that focused on Romero-style zombies and how they could (hypothetically) happen in real life.  It was a good program, but seriously...NatGeo's cashing in on this?  I feel like the zombie phenomenon is approaching the point that Dracula and Frankenstein and all the other Universal monsters hit in the 1940s when they became fodder for Abbott & Costello movies:

Familiarity breeds contempt, as the old saying goes.  Or maybe it just breeds slapstick comedy.  Take your pick.